Compliance-ready construction books for NYC contractors, closed every single month
In New York City the build is rarely the problem. The paperwork is. Certified payroll for a prevailing-wage job, union benefit contributions to reconcile, DOB permit and Site Safety costs to log, insurance certificates, MWBE reporting, and Article 3-A trust fund records all land on the same desk that is supposed to be closing the books. The compliance is time-sensitive so it always jumps the line, and the ledger slides weeks, then months, behind. Add high-rise and gut-renovation jobs running at once on tight, congested sites, and by the time anyone reconciles, the wage rates, draw history, and trust-fund detail an auditor might ask for are half-remembered. A general bookkeeper treats a construction company like a retail shop and misses every bit of it. Construction bookkeeping is the only thing we do, and for NYC contractors that means one outcome: compliance-ready books kept current so your certified payroll and trust-fund records are always audit-ready. We handle daily job and cost-code coding, AP and subs, AR and draws and retainage, certified payroll recording, QuickBooks, and a real monthly close delivered on a fixed date. We work with general contractors, high-rise and renovation crews, concrete and structural, mechanical trades, and specialty subs across all five boroughs.
On the ground
New York City construction bookkeeping
Bookkeeping for a construction company in New York City is nothing like bookkeeping for a shop or an office. Between multi-draw AIA billing, retainage held for months, certified payroll and union benefits, subcontractor payments across large crews, and DOB compliance costs that have to land on the right job, a general bookkeeper simply codes it wrong. Clean books are the foundation everything else stands on.
They didn’t just record transactions and call it a day. They built a custom chart of accounts around how a remodeling company actually runs, did a full catch-up on years of bookkeeping inside QuickBooks Online, and now stay on top of my monthly bookkeeping and payroll. Every step, they broke it down in simple terms instead of burying me in accountant talk.
FinTruction rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, with real job costing, work in progress, and retainage. They didn’t just hand me reports and disappear; they walked me through my numbers until I understood them.
Sahil and his team handle the bookkeeping and job costing for my painting business. They cleaned up my books and set up integrations that give me accurate, timely job costing with solid weekly data. Reliable, detailed, and genuinely invested in getting the numbers right.
FinTruction is the only bookkeeping team we’ve found that truly understands construction accounting and WIP reporting. They aligned our income and costs across 21 jobs and gave us full, monthly transparency. Fast, accurate, and an indispensable partner.
When I came to FinTruction I had no financial structure. No job costing, no WIP tracking, books behind. They did a full cleanup and rebuilt job costing and WIP tracking in QuickBooks. Now I know what’s billed, what’s owed, and where every job stands.
A couple of minutes from a contractor we support, sharing what working with FinTruction has been like and what changed once their numbers finally made sense.
A general bookkeeper can record transactions. Construction accounting is a different job.
| What you need | Generic local bookkeeper | FinTruction |
|---|---|---|
| Job-level costing | Lumps all jobs into one P&L | Cost codes and margin per project |
| WIP & revenue recognition | Cash-basis, no WIP schedule | Monthly WIP with over/underbilling |
| Retainage tracking | Buried in AR/AP, often missed | Tracked receivable & payable by contract |
| Bonding & lender packages | Not equipped to produce them | Bonding-ready statements and backlog |
| Construction software | QuickBooks set up like a retail shop | QuickBooks + integrations tuned for contractors |
Our construction bookkeeping supports contractors and specialty trades across all five boroughs, from Manhattan high-rise GCs to Staten Island residential builders. Whether you run a small crew or manage large multi-phase jobs, we keep your books clean and job-level accurate.
Are You a Contractor in New York City?
Get Clean Books and Financial ClarityAccurate books start with putting every dollar against the right job, cost code, and account the day it happens. We handle daily entry so your QuickBooks is always current and you can see where each NYC job actually stands, including the DOB and Site Safety costs that usually disappear into overhead, instead of finding out at month-end.
If your file is a mess or you are months behind because the compliance paperwork always came first, we fix it. Many NYC contractors come to us with miscoded expenses, undeposited funds sitting for months, and no real job costing. We rebuild the file for construction and bring every account current so you can trust the numbers again.
NYC contractors run large subcontractor and supplier networks across every project. We keep AP organized, code each bill to the right job, tag MWBE payments where the project requires it, and stay ahead of payment schedules so you protect vendor relationships, avoid late fees, and reach year-end with clean 1099 records.
Getting paid keeps the doors open, and on NYC high-rise, commercial, and public work that means multi-draw AIA billing with retainage held for months. We record every progress draw and pay application accurately, track retainage receivable by project, and follow the aging so nothing slips between draws on a long job.
Labor is the biggest line for most NYC builders, and with union crews and prevailing-wage work it only tells the truth if it is coded to the right job. We record payroll, allocate labor to projects and cost codes, and keep the certified payroll and union benefit records that public work in the city demands.
Every month you get a clean, construction-formatted statement package on a fixed date, reconciled and ready for your CPA, bank, or surety. No more waiting weeks, buried under compliance paperwork, to find out how the business did.
Every construction platform claims to have a "QuickBooks integration." Most break the moment your books need to be accurate. Sales tax mismaps, retainage disappears, change orders create duplicates, and job costing reports stop matching project reality. We fix the integration so your software, your books, and your job‑level numbers all tell the same story.
Also work with Foundation, Sage 100, Bill.com, ADP, Gusto, Ramp, and more. See all platforms we integrate →
New York City runs the largest construction market in the country, and it is also the most paperwork-heavy. Between high-rise and commercial towers in Manhattan, mixed-use and residential growth across Brooklyn and Queens, hospital and school work in the Bronx and Staten Island, and MTA and infrastructure jobs like the Penn Station area and Hudson Yards buildout, most contractors are running several active projects at once.
Every one of those jobs generates a stream of transactions and a second stream of compliance: subcontractor bills, material runs, equipment rentals, progress draws, retainage held and released, DOB permit and Site Safety costs, certified payroll each pay period, union benefit contributions, and MWBE reporting. The compliance work is time-sensitive, so it always jumps the line, and the bookkeeping quietly slides to the bottom of the pile.
When the books fall behind, the damage is quiet but real. Cash flow decisions get made on stale numbers, miscoded costs hide which jobs are actually losing money, 1099 season becomes a scramble, and the year-end handoff to a CPA turns into an expensive cleanup. The work was profitable; the record-keeping is what put the company at risk.
FinTruction keeps NYC contractors out of that hole. We take the recording burden off your desk and match the pace of the city with a disciplined monthly process, so your books stay compliance-ready and current, certified payroll and trust-fund records stay audit-ready, and you always know where the money went.
Certified Payroll on Prevailing-Wage Projects: NYC public works and city-funded projects require prevailing wages set by the NYC Comptroller and certified payroll each pay period. Our bookkeeping keeps wage rates by trade classification, hours coded by project, and fringe and supplemental benefit payments recorded so certified payroll can be produced on time rather than reconstructed under deadline.
NYC DOB Permit and Safety Costs: The NYC Department of Buildings regulates permits, inspections, and Site Safety Training across all five boroughs, and those costs add up on every job. We code DOB permit fees, insurance certificate costs, safety expenses, and any violation penalties to the project they belong to, so your records show the true cost of building in the city.
Lien Law Article 3-A Trust Fund Records: New York Lien Law Article 3-A treats construction payments received in NYC as trust funds, and clean records are what demonstrate compliance. We track trust fund receipts and disbursements at the project level and keep the payment history documented so the support is there if a dispute or audit arises. This is recordkeeping, not legal advice.
Subcontractor 1099 and MWBE Reporting: Contractors who pay a subcontractor $600 or more in a year must issue a 1099-NEC, and many NYC public projects also carry Minority and Women-Owned Business Enterprise participation goals. We track every subcontractor payment by vendor and job all year, collect W-9s up front, and tag payments by MWBE certification status so filings and utilization reports match your books.
NYC Sales and Use Tax on Materials: New York City carries a combined sales tax rate of 8.875 percent, and construction materials are generally taxable unless purchased for a qualifying capital improvement or government contract. We separate taxable purchases from labor and subcontractor costs in your records and keep exemption certificates on file so tax time is straightforward.
We work only with construction companies, so we code your books the way contractors actually operate, not the way a general bookkeeper guesses.
FinTruction runs your construction bookkeeping in New York City on the software you already use. We connect your accounting platform, field and project management tools, and payroll so transactions flow into clean books without double entry.
We set up and maintain QuickBooks Online and Desktop specifically for New York City contractors, so job costing, retainage, and progress invoicing are handled correctly from the first entry rather than bolted on later.
Need QuickBooks Cleaned Up for Construction?
We connect the tools your NYC crews use in the field to your books so draws, costs, and payments flow through without manual re-entry.
Every month, without exception. NYC contractors running multiple jobs across the five boroughs generate too many transactions, and too much compliance paperwork, to reconcile once a quarter. We run a clean monthly close: bank and card reconciliations, job-cost coding checked, AP and AR brought current, retainage positions updated, and a financial statement package delivered on a fixed date each month so the books are never weeks behind.
Yes, QuickBooks cleanup is one of the most common ways NYC contractors start with us. We rebuild the chart of accounts for construction, fix miscoded expenses and undeposited funds, set up job costing classes and items, correct retainage entries, and reconcile back through the year. Once the file is clean we keep it clean with a disciplined monthly process so you stop losing weekends to catch-up.
Yes, on the bookkeeping side. NYC public works and city-funded projects require prevailing wages set by the NYC Comptroller and certified payroll each pay period. We keep the underlying records straight: wage rates by trade classification, hours coded to the right job, and fringe and supplemental benefit payments documented, so certified payroll reports can be produced on time instead of reconstructed under deadline.
The NYC Department of Buildings regulates permits, inspections, and safety across all five boroughs, and those costs pile up fast. We code DOB permit fees, insurance certificate costs, Site Safety Training expenses, and any violation penalties to the project they belong to, so your job-cost records show the true cost of building in the city rather than burying compliance in overhead.
Yes. New York Lien Law Article 3-A treats construction payments received in NYC as trust funds, and clean bookkeeping is what proves compliance. We track trust fund receipts and disbursements at the project level and keep the payment history documented, so if a dispute or audit comes up your records demonstrate where every dollar went. This is a recordkeeping service; we do not provide legal advice.
Catch-up bookkeeping is a core service. We reconcile from the last clean month forward, recategorize transactions to the correct jobs and cost codes, sort out subcontractor and material payments, tag MWBE payments where required, and hand your CPA a clean set of books. Most NYC contractors who are three to nine months behind are caught up within two to four weeks with no disruption to the field.
We work with contractors across all five boroughs: Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, plus the surrounding metro. Our bookkeeping is fully remote, so we support high-rise builders, gut-renovation crews, trades, and specialty subs anywhere in the city without needing to visit your office or jobsite trailer.
Bookkeeping is the day-to-day work: coding transactions to jobs, reconciling accounts, managing AP and AR, recording retainage and certified payroll, and producing monthly statements. Accounting builds on those books with WIP reporting, revenue recognition, tax planning, and CFO-level analysis. Many NYC contractors start with bookkeeping to get clean, current records, then add construction accounting in New York City as they grow. We provide both.
FinTruction provides construction bookkeeping and accounting across major cities in New York. Select your city to learn more about our contractor bookkeeping and job costing services in your area.
Beyond day-to-day books, we also run job costing, WIP reporting, tax planning, and CFO support for New York City contractors.
Construction Accounting in New York City
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We serve contractors across all of New York State
If you are searching for construction bookkeeping in New York City, QuickBooks cleanup, or catch-up bookkeeping to get your contractor books back on track, FinTruction is ready to help your business gain financial clarity.
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